The Last Drink Bird Head Awards
Posted on October 5, 2009 Posted by John Scalzi 9 Comments
Ann and Jeff VanderMeer have put together a charity anthology called Last Drink Bird Head, and to celebrate, they’ve announced nominees for the First Last Drink Bird Head Awards, which they will present at the World Fantasy Convention this year. The awards are “to celebrate those in the genre community who enrich us with their time, energy, and words, often for causes greater than themselves,” and the winners will get chocolate, a certificate and, appropriately, a drink bird.
I happen to be a nominee in a category, the (one assumes somewhat ironically named) Gentle Persuasion category, “In recognition of individuals willing to enter into blunt discourse about controversial issues.” Yes, well. The other nominees in the category are K. Tempest Bradford and Nick Mamatas. “Gentle Advocacy” indeed! There are four other categories as well:Tireless Advocacy, Promotion of Reading, Expanding Our Vocabulary, and International Activism. The full list of nominees is at the link above.
As a nominee, I say: Neat, and also, a well-picked category I’m in. I shall not be sad to lose to Tempest or to Nick. Congrats to all the nominees.
Hey, congratulations!
(And that is how you do a striking cover).
By “controversial issues” are they referring to your Star Wars = Bad Sci Fi discussion? ;)
Congrats!
I hope you win. I don’t know about Mamatas and “discourse.” The only interaction I’ve ever had with him was on another site where he came into a thread and started telling everyone the right way to read something; we agreed that his reading was possible but not the only one, at which point he just started saying we were wrong over and over, rather than arguing for his point of view, called a bunch of us stupid, and left (not a “flounce,” he just stopped posting).
I guess that’s discourse in the sense that he was certainly talking, but not in the higher sense of the term, which requires one to listen as well.
I would have thought with your Big Idea pieces that you’d be nominated for Promoting Reading. I know I’ve added a few books to my inventory/reading list from some of those pieces.
Amazingly, the actual events Xopher is, uh, “recalling” are nothing at all like thar summary, except that I stopped posting when it was clear that the moderator was playing by the ol’ rulebook, of “Whoever complains first is right.”
It wasn’t even the only interaction I’ve had with Xopher. That’s just another little lie.
Oh, right, I actually forgot our earlier interaction. Which I thought ended amicably, but it turned out you were still carrying a grudge about.
And if you blame the moderator, does that mean you’ll never post there again? I can only hope.
And now you’re calling me a liar. I could link to the thread and let folks judge for themselves, but it’s probably not worth it.
I daresay we shall never be friends, you and I; also that neither of us will shed many tears about that fact.
The thread is the Making Light thread on Lev Grossman’s remarks in the Wall Street Journal. I’d be positively thrilled to let folks judge for themselves.
Incidentally, in the Grossman thread, which you are complaining about now, I explicitly talked about our previous interaction (also on Making Light, over the antics of William Sanders), so that’s a nice piece of prima facie evidence that your recall of Grossman thread isn’t all that great.
Nick, perhaps my recall is imperfect. I am also quite comfortable having people read that thread. And I’ve already admitted that I forgot about our previous interaction (though what I said here was that my only interaction with you happened on that site, which is true, but not what I meant); I really didn’t find it as significant as you obviously did, and bore you no ill will based on it.
I have much more to say, but among other reasons, I don’t want to have this fight on John’s blog. Or anywhere, really, which is prima facie evidence of my having made an error in bringing it up at all. I stand by everything I’ve said, though.
The error was, among other things, an error of courtesy to John. John, my apologies. Bringing this up here was inappropriate and I regret it.